Claire was Head of Gough Square Chambers for 13 years leading up to December 2018.
Although Claire will still accept requests to advise on complicated consumer law issues, she now focusses mainly on Dispute Resolution. She is skilled as a mediator and has a wide-ranging legal background that, in addition to expertise in consumer, food and regulatory law, also encompassed common-law contractual disputes, carriage contracts, supply chain conflicts (both contractual and regulatory), chancery work and crime, that enables her to comprehend the many demands – legal, practical and procedural – of acting as an arbitrator.
She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and has also been an accredited mediator since June 2007. She was formerly the honorary secretary of MTVM mediators. She is a member of the Bar Council ADR panel and has been engaged in its programme of training mediation advocates and contributed to its consultation documents. She is a member of the CMC.
Claire is pleased also to be a CEDR ADR Official, acting as a panel member on many of CEDR’s consumer law dispute resolution and other schemes. In this context, she has made many hundreds of arbitration awards and adjudication decisions.
As a member of GSC, Claire spent much of her career advising and acting for businesses, consumers and enforcers on consumer-related and regulatory issues in both civil and criminal proceedings and specialised in particular in food law and food hygiene law, product safety, advertising and labelling as well as borderline medicinal/cosmetic/food supplement products, and health and safety. She continues to be the General Editor of Butterworths Law of Food and Drugs and is author of “Enforcement of Consumer Rights and Protections” (LexisNexis, December 2015). She is a committee member of the Food Law Group. In her litigation career, Claire has been involved in many disputes about terms in consumer and supply chain contracts, and in product liability matters including product recalls and liability for defective services. She has been instructed in numerous other regulatory issues including unfair terms in consumer contracts, unfair commercial practices and consumer protection as well as other issues including supply chain disputes, landlord and tenant disputes, directors disqualification, protection of minority shareholders, boundary disputes, disputes about interests in land and many other matters. Claire at one time also undertook criminal cases, particularly concerning commercial fraud. She is now able to bring this wealth of experience to her choice to specialise in decision-making and dispute resolution.
Claire is also a first tier tribunal fee paid judge, health, education and social care chamber.